


sir, take it easy

by seaofeels



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: 'this is how i'm forcing myself to study for my final on thursday'), (and by musical references i mean -, Gen, Historical Accuracy, Musical References, fandom (other): musi020 (medieval/renaissance music) lecture notes, mathematical inaccuracy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21814861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaofeels/pseuds/seaofeels
Summary: "I am – I am not saying,don'tput words in my mouth -" Kanafinwë Makalaurë wagged his finger at his cousin Findaráto Ingoldo, perched bright-eyed beside him on the edge of the stream - "that it is bad. You know full well that I believe there is no such thing as empirically bad music." They were kicking their feet in the moonlight water, watching the light dance in the fast-flowing spray, and they were both extremely drunk.When Tolkien imagined Middle-earth as an ancient Europe, I don't think he meant for me to map nearly a thousand years of European music history, both secular and liturgical, onto Tirion's academic community. (Take comfort, Professor, in the implication that they are all now Catholic.)
Relationships: Finrod Felagund | Findaráto & Maglor | Makalaurë
Comments: 55
Kudos: 65





	1. sing, cuccu, sing

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the Fourth Age - Finrod's alive, Maglor's home, and we've got some catching up to do.

"I am – I am not saying, _don't_ put words in my mouth -" Kanafinwë Makalaurë wagged his finger at his cousin Findaráto Ingoldo, perched bright-eyed beside him on the edge of the stream - "that it is bad. You know full well that I believe there is no such thing as empirically bad music." They were kicking their feet in the moonlight water, watching the light dance in the fast-flowing spray, and they were both extremely drunk.

"A count on which I heartily disagree with you, but continue." Findaráto took another long draught from the bottle between them and passed it back to Kanafinwë with a nod.

"You are, and always have been, a prescriptivist bastard, but that can't be helped. As I was saying, I do not think the new music is bad. I think it shows less attention to technical skill than I am accustomed to, and it affords the composer less scope for – what's the word -" he collapsed into a run of Sindarin, rendered barely intelligible by a strong Mannish accent and several thousand years of separation from the dialect Findaráto had learned, before resurfacing - "for individual expression, for flourish. I personally believe that declaiming text is not the point of song, and that if you are limiting yourself to one melodic line and an entirely syllabic setting you are wasting worlds of sound, which should be the only concern of new composition – but you are entitled to your own opinion." He drank again. 

"By your own definitions of good and bad, which I believe you last articulated to me as 'serving its purpose' and 'not,' I rather think you do consider it bad music, when compared to your hour-long melismas and your reams of incoherent polyphony." Kanafinwë shot him a jaundiced look, which was ruined by Findaráto paying more attention to a fruit bat on the other side of the stream than to him. 

"There is only music with and without intention, and it is the level of intention that determines quality," Kanafinwë said with a stab at dignity, steadying himself on the log next to him. "No, that's not right. There is only music with intention. Anything else is sound. If you meant to make music, you have."

Findaráto stared at him in blank astonishment. "Absolutely not." Kanafinwë tried to pass him the bottle, but as Findaráto did not seem inclined to do anything other than continue staring at him, he let his hand fall. "You are telling me, then, that – that – suppose I took a collection of handbells in harmony with one another." Kanafinwë raised his eyebrows, and nearly fell over. 

"So, you have your handbells. Continue."

"Suppose further that I took, oh, I took one of those – what do you call them, where the ball runs down the pyramid of pegs, suppose I used that to ring a bell or rest, perfectly randomly, and then sent hundreds of balls down in the first rhythmic mode, _long_ -breve _long_ -breve _long_ -," he counted it out on a stone between them, and would have kept going, save that Kanafinwë kicked his foot.

"Just a moment, that's not evenly random, it's a normal distribution, I don't see how you plan to approximate anything remotely resembling true randomness with this -"

"Suppose," said Findaráto, with a ragged desperation, and Kanafinwë sat back with a gesture both of unsteady contempt and defeat. 

"So, I will grant you your random distribution. Continue – name of light, I cannot wait to see in what direction you next bend this argument."

"Suppose I leave it and go away for a month, and by chance it plays a new variation on, say, the melody of the Cuckoo's movement from Birds of Summer, in the second week. You would say that is not music, even if the contraption played a technically perfect rota, because it happened by chance, without intent?"

"You are drunk," Kanafinwë said, with an attempt at the tones of tolerant sobriety that utterly lacked self-awareness, and so fell short. "Therefore I will excuse your laughable estimate at the amount of time that would require – my god, even leaving out the base feet, you are talking a chance at – how many different bells are there? Say it is the least possible number, that is -" he ran through a bar or two in a flutter of quick, brilliant notes that set the birds singing in his wake, even after he was done and tallying up his fingers - "nine pitches and one empty for a rest, probably more if it is a variation so let us round to twelve, and unless memory fails the Cuckoo movement is a mere twelve or thirteen bars – it is one out of twelve-to-the-ninety-sixth possible songs of the same length, supposing equal randomness, and you would have to go to the Mathematical Conservatory if you wanted the exact numbers for the real distribution, it has been years since I have needed to know them – but over the space of a month, if you kept this running at a steady allegro, your chances might rise to -"

"You are avoiding the question," Findaráto interrupted, because even quite drunk he knew the best way to convince one of his cousins to come down from a tangent was an accusation of cowardice. "Is it music? If it happened, would you call it music?"

"Of course," Kanafinwë said, a surprised frown burying itself between his eyebrows, and Findaráto threw his hands up in frustration. There was a clatter, and a splash, and the bottle broke into a perfectly musical chime on the jutting river-rocks of the streambed. "Of course, because the intent was there when you built your – whatever it is. The intent to have music. You have merely introduced an element of natural interference, no greater than the fluctuations of the voice or the vibrations of a harp-string." He paused, looking morosely down at the glass shimmering across the stones and under the water, and added, "You could have said wind chimes, if that was all the answer you wanted. Now I will have to build the damned thing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Although I'm playing fast and loose with time periods, the substance of this is as correct as I've been able to get it. This chapter deals with the Council of Trent and the shift away from complex polyphony (song with multiple voices following different melodies) as a part of the Counter-Reformation, as both early Protestants and Catholics discovered a sudden love for simple (boring) melodies and clearly enunciated (boring) sacred text that's been an off-and-on concern in the church since St. Augustine was whining about the devilish emotional powers of good music back in the fifth century. The Cuckoo Movement is a wholesale theft of the infamous "Sumer is icumen in, lhude sing cuccu," which is indeed in rhythmic mode 1, is the first known example of six-voice polyphony, and also fuckin' slaps.


	2. sed redeat medius

“What is this, Findaráto?” Pleasant, restrained, polite. Holding the partbook upside down, though he could read the text perfectly well, and they both knew it, because he was choosing to be obstinate on the matter. 

“If you meant what, specifically, you are holding, that is a collection of some of the music composed for Ingwion’s grandson’s wedding last autumn,” Findaráto said, electing to ignore the calculated display of disdain. “If, as I believe, you meant that more generally, it is the what the Royal Musicological Society considers good polyphony these days. You did ask to see the latest trends of the century, no? The notation should not be _that_ dissimilar.”

“It is not the _notation_ to which I object,” Kanafinwë said, still pleasant, still obviously disgusted. “It’s hardly a struggle to draw the obvious connections to the old mensural notation of the Years of the Trees, and these ligatures seem to lean heavily on traditions that sprang up in what little survived of Exilic systems. For what it is attempting to do, it is certainly quite efficient, though I should hardly like to see it used on one of the old chants. I shudder to think of the wasted space. No, I have no bones to pick with the notation. However, I had hoped there might remain at least one bastion of good sense, that did not seem quite so hell-bent on throwing tritones about like sugared apricots at the songmasters’ graduation parade.” He turned the partbook back around, humming a snatch under his breath before slapping it shut with a scowl. 

“I thought you were adamant that no music was bad. And what would do you suggest, that we go back to Ráincë’s parallels in fifth, or Ambalincë’s discant exercises in fourth? Those were old before either of us were born, and you know it.” [1]

“I am not saying it is bad. I am saying that to me it sounds like all the fiends of Morgoth, but worse, because the fiends of Morgoth were not taking a clausula I wrote for my parents’ anniversary and mangling it. However, as its inclusion in this anthology shows, there are other people who like it, and while I do not understand it, I am not about to give up my Neldor or my Palecéva because the wind of scholarly opinion has blown against them from time to time.” [2] Findaráto processed that for a moment, and then turned back to him in flat consternation. 

“You like Neldor? How long have we been cousins, friends, fellow students of the musical arts, and you have let me go on believing you had taste? And to think they let you teach – no, they let you teach because of your staff notation, I remember. But with opinions like this I cannot _believe_ your works are still in publication; I cannot _believe_ they still teach the choirboys in Alqualondë your hand-counting method -” [3]

“They teach the Hand because children are prone to fidget and yet must also be taught the fundamentals of sightreading, and giving them a means of signing rude words to each other across the benches under the guise of practicing is quieter than leaving them no option but to whisper,” Kanafinwë said with a peaceable calm that left Findaráto sputtering in his wake. “And of course I like Neldor, professionally and personally. He kept me on my toes while I was designing my staff system, and despite all his experiments in dissonance; the mathematical intricacy of his works is truly astounding. He was one of the leading theorists in the ratio theories of music, and even if I can barely hear the themes when played, they remain unprecedented advances in uniting scientific and musical disciplines.”

“Makalaurë, he was using isorhythm centuries after everyone else gave it up as constrained and antiquated. I hope I don’t need to tell you that sort of thing would get you laughed out of every respectable institution today.”

“Of course it would; that’s the nature of progress. But at the time it was incredible – you would barely have been old enough to walk when he officially retired, but his last public lecture was packed. I’d been his research assistant for years and I still didn’t get a chair. Even my father came. The three of us went drinking together after I graduated,” he added reflectively. “They wrote three papers together in a week and published them under someone else’s name. I believe they gave the credit to Hossequinga? Or, no, was it Béthune – it can’t have been Béthune; he was still in disgrace after the school threw him out for pummeling another instructor, for the fifth time.” [4] He was counting on his fingers, seeming to catch names out of the air and pin them into place, drawing invisible lines between teachers and students, acquaintances and colleagues. 

“Damn you,” Findaráto said, without heat, and Kanafinwë paused in his invisible charting to shoot him an inquiring glance. “I shall have to find Hilyacor and apologize now. Yes, it was Hossequinga, and we had a screaming fight about it three hundred years ago and have not spoken since.” 

“Oh?” Kanafinwë raised on eyebrow in measured, decorous surprise, but the corner of his mouth arced up ever so slightly, and his eyes were glittering with quiet laughter. “And what caused my most placid of cousins to engage in a screaming fight at all, much less with – if I have the chronology of your career correct – one of his fellow doctoral candidates?”

“He was one of the first to suggest that in the years following Hossequinga’s death – and you remember the stir that caused, when he joined our uncle’s people on the march – that much of the music and writing circulated after his death, when his unpublished papers were released, was a forgery, because everything with Hossequinga’s name on it sold like baked pears at the midwinter market. He said that none of Hossequinga’s following works made use of the canons suggested in the papers; I said they were likely theoretical only; he said the style was inconsistent with later writings, especially the informality of the register; I said the papers were published in Hossequinga’s lifetime and could hardly have fallen prey to the same posthumous crediting; he said Hossequinga was in on it; I told him – well. And now you are telling me that he was right all along, and, what’s more, my own uncle was one of the co-authors – I very much believe that I hate you, Makalaurë.”

“Well.” Kanafinwë was smiling softly, closing the partbook with a degree of finality that Findaráto only saw when his family became the subject of conversation. “He would be delighted to know how much trouble it caused. And Hossequinga’s prolonged stay in Mandos is, of course, a great loss to the musical community – he has always composed when he feels the immortal spark, and not for any amount of pleading [5] – but I am delighted that it has provided such fodder for conflict, and I rather suspect that he would agree. I will leave you to make your apologies; perhaps -” he hefted the partbook, eyeing it with some amount of tolerant distaste - “your friend will appreciate a copy of this rather more than I would. If he has any taste, he will not, but I suppose I must bow to the flow of public opinion.” Findaráto caught it with a sigh, replacing it on the shelf.

“No, he is a scholar of the old tradition. Your old tradition, I should add – seas and skies, Kano, when did we become old? Time marches on, and I suppose we must either celebrate the progress or be buried beneath it. I think I will put off my groveling for a little longer, in favor of a mild crisis of identity.”

“You’re being melodramatic. You are not having a crisis of identity, you are trying to avoid admitting you couldn’t tell my father’s writing from Hossequinga Lembiosto. The world keeps turning, Findaráto, and the sooner you learn to appreciate the inherent value in everything new while hating it with your entire being, the happier you will be.” 

Findaráto hit him with a partbook.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1]: Ráincë and Ambalincë are, respectively, Léonin and Pérotin, whom Anonymous 4 names among the greatest composers of organum around the 12th century. Léonin and Pérotin are diminutives of "Leo" and "Peter," so I've translated their names into Quenya as "little lion" and "little stone."  
> [2]: Neldor and Palecéva are Guillaume Du Fay and Johannes Ockeghem, rough contemporaries and brilliant Renaissance composers of the 15th century, famous for their obscenely complicated music and particularly their use of Pythagorean ratios. Du Fay composed the "crab canon" from which this chapter gets its name. I believe "Du Fay" comes from Old French for "beech tree," and Ockeghem is named after a town whose name today translates to "new pasture," so the Quenya equivalents were fairly easy to construct.  
> [3]: I'm blatantly disregarding time, so Maglor is Guido of Arezzo, who lived around the turn of the millennium and is credited with inventing the earliest version of the modern staff system of placing notes on lines, as well as the Guidonian Hand.  
> [4]: Hossequinga Lembiosto and Béthune are Josquin De Prez (Josquin Lebliotte) and Antoine Busnois, two brilliant late medieval/early Renaissance composers (late 1400s-early 1500s) - Busnois was excommunicated after his fifth time assaulting a priest. In the years following Josquin's death, we've discovered that a lot of music attributed to him was not. uh. actually his, but he was _wildly_ popular during his day. I could find nothing worth using etymologically for Josquin's name; my sole saving grace is that my Quenya bastardization uses actual Quenya words. Busnois was probably named for the town of Busnes, in the French region of Béthune, and it looked close enough to Quenya that I didn't feel like coming up with something new.  
> [5]: Josquin was not a very steady producer of music. This line is based off one reaction to a lord's decision to hire him as a court composer: "He composes when he wants to, and not when one wants him to, and he is asking 200 ducats in salary while [Heinrich] Isaac will come for 120 - but your lordship will decide," which I thought was hysterical the first time I read it.
> 
> Finrod's friend is roughly named after my professor. He's put a lot of love and effort into our course and I'd like to extend my sincerest apologies to him for doing this with all his hard work.


	3. in nova fert

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "- well, I can do you history and humor without the character development, and I can do you history and character development without the humor, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can't do you humor and character development without the history. History is compulsory - they're all history, you see." "Is that what people want?" "It's what we do."

“You look out of sorts.” Kanafinwë broke off humming and looked up from the manuscript on the desk before him, his scowl smoothing out immediately. Findaráto was fairly sure, however, that it was a politeness sprung from years of practice in handling testy allies and not actual pleasure at seeing him. His smile was pleasant, but it went no farther than his mouth, and there was still the slightest hint of tension in his lips. 

“I have no right to be,” he said, hooking one shoulder into a minuscule shrug. “What horror have you dredged out of your library for me now?” Findaráto had, in fact, brought him a sampling of lute classics composed during the early Third Age, and had been relying on them to send his cousin into a good-humored fit of rage, but he found himself trying to peer over Kanafinwë’s elbow at the score spread across the desk. 

“Later, later. What are you reading? Normally you are delighted to regale me with your complaints on the state of music since the great migration, but you are strangely accepting of whatever you have found today. Let me see.” He tugged at the edge of the scorebook, and let his hand drop like he had caught live fire as Kanafinwë practically snarled at him. “As it please you! I’ll say no more about it.” Whatever it was – but Kanafinwë had shifted to pin the book more firmly against his pulling, and he caught sight of the illumination at the bottom: a crowned crow, golden ink spilling in frozen rays from its head. Findaráto hissed as he recognized it, glancing quickly at Kanafinwë - but he was still looking down at the book, at the dancing courtiers and fawning officials and above all the crow dressed in cloth-of-gold and holding the staff of office in one knobbly claw.

“I have no right to be angry, none in the world,” Kanafinwë said, his voice dead and flat as an empty sheet of staves. “I have heard much worse, after all. But that – it hardly matters. You will, of course, tell me it is all true, and I suppose in this day and age you would be right.” 

“That is the _Nyarë Saucarëo_ , isn’t it,” Findaráto said, more for the sake of saying it than thinking he would do any good by it. Kanafinwë was quietly furious, and more so because he could not be loudly furious. “It is – a very pointed allegory, yes, but it is a work of fiction, and the authors have repeatedly denied any political leanings. Makalaurë, you know it is only in the library because it is -”

“One of the earliest and best examples of the transition back to isorhythm, when it came into its second heyday for a few hundred years, yes, Findaráto, thank you, our little history lessons have not entirely slipped my mind, and there are a number of scholars who were more than willing to add their opinions on its merit to the preface, _you do not have to tell me_ ,” Kanafinwë snapped, and then sighed, closing the volume with a gentleness that Findaráto knew meant he was dying to rip it apart instead, and was restraining himself through sheer force of will. “I am not angry that you have it. I can hardly bring myself to be angry with the authors; it is, of course, very cleverly done, and not even harsh enough to be considered libel even if it were not, as you say, allegorical. As I have said, I have no right in the world to be angry. Though,” he added, and the glare was back, almost as sharp as it had been when Findaráto had walked into the library, “whether they deny it or not, their political leanings are quite evident. Please do not suppose me an idiot.”

“There are some points of debate -” Findaráto began, a little defensively, and then, thinking better of it, closed his mouth. 

“It is a crow named Saucarë, Findaráto, whose name, as we are told within the first stanzo, is an acronym for filth, ruin, sinners, fear, death, debtors, and wasteland. _Saucarë_ , Findaráto, _poor craftsmanship_ ,” Kanafinwë added harshly, the scrape of his chair echoing in the vaulted ceiling as he went to his feet in a rush. “Subtlety was clearly not an object, nor have they left much room for debate on the matter!” He made a sharp, furious little gesture with one hand, a choirmaster struggling to marshal his singers and himself, and let it fall again. When he spoke again, his voice was dull. “It is the story of an arrogant, stupid crow who steals a kingdom for himself in a time of turmoil and drags his people into ruin, as he flaps around in a throne too big for him and vaunts himself to the heavens in grating screeches. I would like to know _exactly who else_ the subject could possibly have been.” 

“I’m sorry,” Findaráto said, for lack of anything better to say. The _Nyarë Saucarëo_ had been lauded as the peak of the “modern” riffs on older compositional styles when it had been written by a group of Tirion satirists sometime near the beginning of the Second Age, and it had been in steady circulation since then. He’d bought a copy for the library, eager to see what the fuss was about and cheerfully ignoring the publisher’s raised eyebrows, and had let it sit untouched on the shelf after the first awkward reading. “It was a handful of students, hundreds of years ago, trying to -” he bit his tongue and tried again, “trying to curry favor with some of my father’s people by attacking yours.”

Kanafinwë turned a mirthless smile on him. “You were about to say ‘preen the crow,’ weren’t you? I had wondered where that idiom found its origins. I had my theories, of course, but this I never would have guessed. It is brilliant, of course,” he added bitterly, tossing his head with the sharpness of a restless horse shaking off flies, “and no one from here to the Eastern Wastes can claim it is anything less than deserved, but I do not think I will ever grow to like it.” He paused, with the light in his eyes of something far remote in time and place, and then shook his head again. “No, I will not. I think perhaps even my father could have found something amusing in parts of it, but the book of the fox and the Black Prince – that, I think, is a step too far for me to overleap.”

“That part is generally acknowledged to be poorly composed,” Findaráto interjected, but Kanafinwë only frowned. 

“It is not bad,” he said, though to Findaráto’s ear the words were being dragged out of him like the last pained scrape of bow on strings. “I do not like it. I feel as though I am going to be sick, when I read what these children obviously think of my family, and I wish them all very cordially into hell. But it is not bad. There is thought in the music, and though they have clearly poured as much of their ill-will into the sound as possible, it is a classic for reasons other than its alignment with the historical opinions of today. I told you, I do not fault you for having it in your library. It is only that I do not like it.”

“Makalaurë, you are allowed to say it is bad. You know me; you know I have hardly ever met a song I did not like, but even I am willing to say that a number of them are not well done. You do not need to prove your open-mindedness and ungrudging nature to anyone, least of all to me.”

“It is not bad, Findaráto,” Kanafinwë repeated, this time with the slightest of faraway smiles. “It at least does no harm that it is not entitled to do, and there I think it has the advantage over me. I will knock this Melarocco down, if I ever meet him, but I will also congratulate him on a masterpiece of the musical endeavor. Then, I think, I will throw myself into the ocean. Now hand me whatever it is you have brought; I am in need of something to hate that is not a pointed caricature of my father, and unless you are holding Daeron’s _Imitations_ behind your back, I think we will do quite well on that front.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is about the poem/collection of motets known as the _Roman de Fauvel_ , a early 14th century satirical work deploring the condition of the French state and Church. (My disregard for the flow of time has already come around to bite me in the ass; I had to create a nonexistent return of isorhythm to explain its falling out of favor during the years of the Trees only to come roaring back in the Second Age as a potshot at Fëanor.) The real _Roman de Fauvel_ told the story of a horse named Fauvel who became the king of France and under whose "reign" corruption abounded. (If you'd like all the painful details of how he got his name and how the Quenya corresponds, let me know and I'll happily oblige.) There's plenty of ink spilled about who's who in the many animal metaphors of the collection, but I was taught that it was largely about Enguerrand de Marigny, chamberlain of Philip the Fair, who was accused of taking bribes (probably unjustifiably), being generally smarmy (justifiably), and sorcery (only because they couldn't find proof of the bribery and needed something to hang him for that would stick, which it did.) This is actually where we get the phrase "curry favor" - it's an English corruption of "curry Fauvel," because the poem involves numerous high-ranking church officials standing around brushing this asshole horse. "Melarocco" is Philippe de Vitry, the most famous composer in the collection, whose motet _Garrit gallus/In nova fert_ was the source for this chapter title and also my midterm paper. You don't want to know what my second choice was for the title.


	4. neumation

“Isn’t it strange,” Kanafinwë said next to him, and Findaráto turned to stare at him in amazement, “isn’t it strange that it took us so long to begin to write music down?” There was a faraway look in his eyes, and he waved loosely at the air in an approximation of something – Findaráto thought he might have been trying to conduct something, or perhaps draw out a staff. Whatever it was proved less than effective in communicating his meaning. “Thousands of years,” he went on, “since we began to sing - and we’d even gathered the general principles of writing down words, but it took hundreds of years after that before we decided we needed to write down music as well. Isn’t it strange? You would have thought we would think music even more important than speech, in more need of collection and conservation, when it was the lifeblood of the world, and the means of creation itself.”

“Makalaurë, I really don’t think this is a time to -”

“We’d even started transcribing _birdsong_ before we moved on to our own music,” Kanafinwë added in tones of frank disbelief. “It took so many years of sitting down and singing each part out every time it needed to be taught again, before we realized we were going about it all wrong, that if we could quantify the intervals of the notes we could write them – how did it take so long?”

“Makalaurë – do you have any insights that might help us in our particular predicament?” Findaráto gestured sharply down through the branches of the tree they were perched in, where a pack of wolves was lazily gathered around the base. Every now and again one of them would snap at a lower branch, and Findaráto would swallow his rising stomach and remind himself that nothing bad had ever happened to anyone in the woods of Oromë, and he was not about to break that record, despite whatever previous experiences might seem to indicate in his future. 

“Hm?” Kanafinwë glanced down. “No, I don’t. Do I look to you like the sort of person who knows how to talk to wolves? They will go away eventually, or they will not, and in either case we will have learned a valuable lesson about charging through the woods as though we were an entire marching band.” Findaráto sighed, leaning back and attempting not to look as though he was hugging the tree for dear life, though to some extent he certainly was. “I was there while the Men were working it out, do you remember?”

“Do I remember – are you _still_ talking about notation?” There was a snarl from below, accompanied by another shudder as a wolf sprang at the tree. Findaráto was forced to reckon with the reality that he was up a tree with a known Kinslayer, and that it was unlikely he would get any use out of praying. The urge to do so was, regardless, strong.

“Would you prefer that I talk about the slavering jaws of the hairy beasts below us, who have likely not fed in quite a long time due to the hard winter we just had and the deer culls from Oromë’s hunters, and who are certainly not about to move off when they can smell the meat on our -” Findaráto nearly pushed him off the branch, and only restrained himself with the reminder that to get in an adequate shove, he would have to let go of the tree himself. 

“No, I would not. Please continue where you left off with the Edain.”

“So.” Kanafinwë sounded utterly too smug for someone who was, in the first place, in equal danger of being shredded to pieces by wolves, and in the second, an utter bastard. “You remember, while we were still struggling to copy down everything we thought we were in danger of losing, before we started getting into the most awful fights with them about tonality and dissonance – the stroke system they came up with.”

“I remember,” Findaráto said, only half thinking about it. The other half of him was painfully aware that he was in danger of being eaten by wolves for the second time, and was fairly sure that the musical notation of the Edain was hardly anything worth paying attention to at the moment.

“It was the most beastly inefficient thing I think I have ever seen. I asked Amlach – maybe you don’t remember him; the boy was at the center of that business with Gorthaur and came north with the idea of sticking a sword in his eye – I asked him, when I was staying with Russandol, what the point of it was. He said that it was a memory aid, that it helped you follow the melody if you knew it once, but were in danger of forgetting. He said that most of their best poetry was written to help them remember the massive strings of notes in the sort that was worse but older; that it was to keep them from forgetting a passage here or there.” Kanafinwë was picking scraps of bark from the branch beneath his feet and tossing them down at the wolves. It made Findaráto want to punch him, but again, that would have required letting go. Rationally he was in very little danger of falling, but irrationally he was practically on the ground already.

“Is there a point to this discourse, Makalaurë, other than perhaps putting me to sleep?” It came out a little more biting than he had hoped, because Kanafinwë blinked and then his eyes were suddenly near again, the faraway sheen vanishing in an instant. 

“Only that it was beautiful,” he said, glancing down at the wolves. “The curves and dashes of their lines, how every leap in pitch was a leap on the page. It was painting music, and I was horribly sorry when they took our advice and turned to the true notes instead of – whatever it was they were doing. It was better,” he added. “It was more real. I had always wanted to invent something that did both, that showed where you were in the music and where you were in your own mind, but I never had the time, and now I doubt I could manage it.”

They sat quietly, watching the wolves circle the tree. It might be hours before they gave up in search of something smaller but easier to drag down. It might be days. Findaráto toyed again with the idea of praying, and dismissed it quickly. Findekáno had been lucky, getting an eagle, and that had been an exceptional circumstance. This was more a case of two cousins getting horribly lost and wandering where they were clearly not wanted by anyone for anything other than a quick meal. It was just their luck, to fall into a den of voracious predators with nothing to do but chase idiots who came charging through their territory by accident.

“I had always envied them that,” Kanafinwë said suddenly, and Findaráto realized after a moment of utter helpless confusion that he was referring to the Edain, and not to the wolves. “The beauty, yes, but the forgetting most of all. What would it be like, to have the chance to learn something more than once? I imagine it would be worth every bit of the inconvenience and pain, for that.”

“This is a surprising deal of poetry, even from you,” Findaráto managed to say. “What, other than being trapped in a tree with no one but your dearest of cousins for company, has brought this about?”

“I am getting it out of my system,” Kanafinwë said gravely, “because I am about to jump down from this tree so you can make a break for it while the wolves are busy tearing me apart. There is no use protesting,” he said over Findarato’s horrified gurgle, “my mind is quite made up on the matter. It is a tragedy, of course, that I survived wars, exile, parenthood, and numerous events that amounted to the fundamental reshaping of the world, only to be eaten by wolves in the heart of the Blessed Realm, but sacrifices must -”

“You’re having a laugh,” Findaráto said, once he had made sure that the dancing light in Kanafinwë’s eyes was truly good humor, and not a desire to shuffle off the mortal coil he had inhabited for so long. “No, you are not going to do that. You’re going to stay up this tree with me, and eventually these wolves will move off, and you are not going to make me sit up here and watch my greatest nightmare be visited on arguably my favorite cousin. There’s not much competition for the post,” he added, with carefully calculated sourness, as Kanafinwë looked halfway prepared to break into song, and his cousin only settled back on the branch with the slightest of smiles.

They sat quietly for a long moment after that, watching the wolves. Findaráto began to braid a clump of needles near him, and gave up a few minutes later when he had exhausted every branch within reach. “I see your point about forgetting,” he finally added, not entirely knowing why he said it, only knowing that the wolves seemed very close in that moment, “I - “ and then, thinking better of it, he closed his mouth. 

Kanafinwë seemed about to say something, but whatever it might have been was lost as the wolves surrounding them suddenly threw their heads back and began to howl, and in the distance Findaráto thought he heard the drumming of hoofbeats. Through the canopy, Findaráto saw a pack of riders come tearing through the trees, but the wolves seemed adamant not to bolt. Praying he was not about to see a bloodbath for either side, Findaráto craned his neck to see whether they might stand any chance of obtaining help -

“No,” Kanafinwë breathed at his side, and then he was launching himself down through the tree, through Findaráto’s horrified reach, to swarm with the wolves turned gentle as puppies at the bottom; “no,” Findaráto heard him say, a little louder, and finally, as though his heart was breaking into pure light, “Turkafinwë Tyelkormo, what are you _doing?_ ”

Findaráto saw silver hair and a wide, laughing grin, and whatever answer the returned ghost of Tyelkormo made was lost as Kanafinwë, utterly unable to help himself, burst into song – an old song, its strains of Westron so wildly out of place in sunlit Valinor, and the wolves bayed in wild harmony, and the last thing that Findaráto thought, before he was swinging down to give his cousin a gentle and well-deserved pummeling, was that perhaps it was not so bad not to forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's roughly T-minus-9 hours until the test I started writing this for, and I'm feeling a little emotional about this course - hence the increase in mush, and the decrease in actual quality for this chapter. Neumes - the earliest form of notation - didn't use a staff; they just involved using a small set of symbols like dashes or dots to show changes in pitch. Of course this only worked if you knew the melody already, and just needed a reminder, but it was the basis for increasingly complex musical notation, and, to regurgitate what my professor said during today's final cram session, they have the advantage of actually showing the flow and contour of a piece over the individual noteheads in modern notation. Personally I think they're stupidly pretty. 
> 
> There's a _lot_ of material on my cram sheet that hasn't found its way into a chapter yet, so expect this thing to keep growing by bits until I've gotten through it.


	5. musica secreta

Kanafinwë had occupied the library, and from the quiet laughter Findaráto could hear even halfway down the hall, someone else had as well. Discretion, as the poets said, might have been the better part of valor, but Findaráto had never considered himself exceptionally well versed in either. He toed the door open, but quietly.

“- still agree on one thing, and that is that we hate Amarilla Acúna,” Kanafinwë was saying lightly. “Oh, hello, Findaráto.”

“Findaráto! It’s wonderful to see you again,” Péverya said, where she lounged with all the grace of a wildcat against one of the desks. “Káno says you’ve been holding concerts in the north-side amphitheater; why have I not heard of this until now?”

“I had no idea you were in the city! Why did you never come visit? How long have you been in town, anyway? I should have thought I would have heard of it if the renowned Hopassë Péverya of the Ocombë Aranellion had been performing within a hundred miles of Tirion.” 

Péverya laughed, and Findaráto could hardly hope to miss the quiet, slow smile that spread over Kanafinwë’s face at the sight of it. Péverya was known for her singing, of course, but the people closest to her loved her for her laugh – smooth as light through crystal, and twice as clean. “You have not heard of it because I only came to town yesterday, and because I am not performing. It took an absurd amount of time for word to reach me in Valmar that Káno had made his way home again. And even if I were here on business, what makes you think you would be invited to a concert of the Ocombë Aranellion? We were hardly known for our open attendance even in the old days, and now we only sing for ourselves, on the rare occasions when some of us are in the same city.”

“That’s true,” Kanafinwë added, the last traces of his smile still lingering in the corners of his mouth, “they threw me out ten years in and never looked back.” Findaráto prided himself on possessing, to some extent, the air of authority associated with ruling a kingdom of Exilic Noldor for several hundred years, and the dignity and decorum that had given him the name “The Wise,” but Kanafinwë had been bringing suitors home years before Findaráto had ever been born, and the wink Péverya gave Kanafinwë, slow and easy, and the quiet laugh they shared after, made Findaráto feel twenty years old again and very out of place. 

“We threw you out of the singers’ group, but we let you keep coming to performances for another ten years after that,” she said. “Then you started causing trouble in the back rows, and we had to bar you from that too.” Kanafinwë threw his head back and laughed at that, and Findaráto stopped to ask himself when the last time was that he’d seen such free and easy delight from him. Even when they’d found Tyelkormo, there had been something disbelieving, something afraid, as though he had been unsure whom he might find inside what looked to be his brother’s body. Findaráto had been there as Tyelkormo had grown less and less like himself in Nargothrond, and he had to admit it had been a thought in his own mind as well. In that moment, though, Kanafinwë looked like there was nothing in the world that could dampen his spirits. 

“Yes, yes, we all know _just how_ awful I can be,” he managed, and Péverya glanced at him before breaking down into laughter herself. Findaráto stared, feeling small and confused and unsure if he even wanted to know what the joke was. There was a certain pride in not knowing, and not wanting to know, that was utterly lost by asking for an explanation. “My god, this is worse than the day we met – you remember, it was at the Lesser Musicians’ Court in Valmar, and it was Vána’s Rising and the air was full of cherry blossoms -”

“I remember, Káno,” Péverya said, all tartness belied by an infectious smile. “You hardly have to remind me of that day. If you were not my dearest friend in the world, I would knock you down for that, but as it stands I will allow you to escape unbruised.” So they had broken it off properly, then. Findaráto had assumed, for a moment, that they were – but it was none of his business. They seemed on good terms still, and that was the main thing. 

“I have never been able to show my face there since that day, and I hope you know it,” Kanafinwë said, still struggling to keep his laughter in. “Thank god no one else saw me there – oh, no, Anguaranya was there, _damn_. How has she been? I haven’t heard word of her the entire time I’ve been here.” 

Péverya raised one sharp eyebrow at him. “Kanafinwë, if you are joking, I’ll have your head. That’s not funny.” Findaráto began to debate the merits and demerits of slipping out quietly, in case an argument was brewing, but there seemed to be no way of doing it without drawing even more attention to himself. 

Kanafinwë, to his credit or discredit, was holding his ground. “I’ve said a number of vicious, unpleasant things over the years, and an unfortunate number have been directed at you, but in this particular instance I would very much like to know how I have contrived to offend with so little intent. Has something happened between you and Anguaranya since we last spoke?”

“Findaráto?” Péverya was not looking away from Kanafinwë, but even the indirect force of her attention was enough to give Findaráto a slight shiver. There was a reason she had always been the face of the Ocombë Aranellion in the day, and there was a reason she and Kanafinwë had always been two peas in a particularly strong-willed pod. “Your cousin is an idiot.” That, at least, was something Findaráto was quite capable of agreeing with. “Anguaranya went overseas with your parade of idiots. A few hundred years after you left, the report came from the Halls that she had died.” 

Kanafinwë opened and closed his mouth a few times, before hazarding a tentative, “I’m sorry.” Then he frowned. “But I could have sworn – I would have sworn to it in court that she was Vanyarin; I thought her father composed _I Mavar Vórima_ for Ingwë’s summer festival back in the day – I’m not confusing her with Tarnaquín, am I?”

“This man is an utter fool,” Péverya said gravely, but she was smiling. “My god, Káno, if you want to know why a Vanya went with you overseas - why did I move to Tirion from Valmar?”

“They dissolved the Ocombë, didn’t they?” Kanafinwë said, still with a puzzled frown buried between his eyebrows, and Péverya buried her face in her hands with a pained little sound halfway between a groan and a laugh. “That’s how I remember it; they dissolved the concerta and you came to Tirion for that year-long theory course Palecéva was teaching -”

_“I married you, Kanafinwë.”_ Her voice was a little muffled, coming from behind her hands, and Kanafinwë stopped, mouth dropping open. “I cannot believe you. Yes, they dissolved the concerta because the whole mystery of the thing started to lose its appeal after a few centuries and the three of us wanted to pursue our own projects, and I wanted to pursue the Tirion musical scene, which at the time was you and maybe three other people worth listening to. And Anguaranya was wildly in love with one of your father’s lesser captains.”

“I disagree with your assessment of my contemporaries, but -”

“- do _not_ give me that line about how there is no such thing as bad music, you’re just an uncultured pig with no taste -”

“- but, I wanted to say, thank you. I was ridiculously grateful that you moved to the same city; you know the distance was starting to wear on me, but I had no idea you were doing it for me, and I’m sorry I never thanked you for it at the time.” The look Péverya gave him was so fond in its exasperation that Findaráto felt the need to look away, quite sure he was intruding. “I am very sorry about Anguaranya; I had no idea. I do hope that she was even a fraction as happy as we were.”

“Hm.” She was smiling, which Findaráto took to be a good sign. Hopassë Péverya was a relentless force, for anger or for joy, and he was quite glad it seemed to be coming down more on the latter side. “I should go; I promised I would meet Tarnaquín for dinner – she will be delighted to hear that you were an inch away from confusing her with Anguaranya; she will laugh and then she will try to kill you. It was very good to see you, Findaráto – please keep this husband of mine in check.” Findaráto blinked, and before he had a chance to process that, Kanafinwë was reaching for her hand and letting her tug him to his feet from the deep corner armchair to give her a kiss that Findaráto was quite sure he had never seen good friends give each other before, save when utterly drunk, and in most of those cases the parties involved had ended up married in the space of a year.

“I thought you were separated,” he said faintly, and two pairs of piercing eyes turned to him in unison. 

“What on earth would – was it because I said we were best friends?” Péverya asked, sounding genuinely astonished. “I have to admit it _is_ a miracle that anyone could be friends with this wreck, but I manage. He has his good qualities somewhere, and I do not like his face or his voice enough to marry him without the benefit of his being good company. He was my friend before he was my spouse, and while I have no intention of letting him go again now that he is back on the continent, I hope that even then we would still be friends.” Kanafinwë was laughing, doubled over with his hands on his knees and gasping for air, and Findaráto shot him a venomous glare. “Stop laughing, Káno, your cousin is a very lovely man and he’s done nothing to deserve this. He’s just happy that someone else has said something to distract from him putting both feet in his mouth in quick succession two minutes ago,” she added, cuffing Kanafinwë lightly on the back of the head. “It really was lovely to see you, Findaráto. If I can ever convince this idiot to learn my accompaniment parts, we will be sure to invite you to the performance.” Kanafinwë sobered quickly, kissing her hand quickly as she slipped out the door, and he stood like a statue watching as she disappeared around the corner of the hall outside.

“I wrote the most awful madrigals for her,” he said, fondly. “Everyone else did too, but mine were so utterly miserable that she just had to see me for herself, and I am very lucky that she thought whatever she saw was worth getting to know a bit better. They compiled entire anthologies for our wedding, did you know?” Findaráto did not, and was too shaken from the entire encounter to make much comment on the matter. “She deserves a great deal better than a fool who spent most of our married life overseas, for no good reason, but she has me, and she seems unwilling to part with me now. When your jaw has detached itself from the floor,” he added, clapping Findaráto on the shoulder and standing, “I have a few galliards I should like you to take a look at, but until then I will leave you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I'm not trying to cram the maximum amount of information into the minimum number of chapters for test mnemonics anymore, I can spend 2000 words doing nothing but inventing a character for Malgor's wife, and it's great. 
> 
> The Ocombë Aranellion/ _concerto delle donne_ /"concert of ladies" was a group of three (possibly four) women who sang professionally in the Duke of Ferrara's court from about 1580-1597. They were ridiculously talented, according to the records of everyone who ever got to hear them - and that wasn't many, because the point of the _concerto_ was that they only sang for small groups of the inner circle at court. Hopassë Péverya/Laura Peverara was the first member; there were indeed madrigals written and anthologies collected in her honor, although her husband was not a musician. For a while the group did have one man singing bass, but they kicked him out after a few years, so I've conflated him and her husband and slapped them both onto Malgor. Anguaranya is Anna Guarini, who was, uh, actually murdered in her bed by her husband on unfounded suspicions of infidelity. We're going to give her a marginally more pleasant storyline here. Tarnaquín is Tarquinia Molza, who was _ridiculously_ cool and I just had to put her in even though we're not really sure what role she played in the group - she may have performed, or she may just have coached, either way she was brilliant and very talented and I like her a lot. The entire group was incredible and I'm sad we didn't spend more time talking about them.
> 
> Amarilla Acúna also has a real-world equivalent, and she's included because my prof's farewell remarks to me centered around her as a prime example of "god-i-hope-i-was-better-than-that." I'm not going to say, but if you know who it is, I'll write you a chapter about anything you like.


	6. interlude: engl014/ling001

"Kanafinwë, are you all right?" Findaráto was quite sure what he would tell him, but ever since they had started the business of clearing out Kanafinwë's old home on the southern slopes of Tuna, it had seemed that his mood was growing steadily worse. He'd chalked it up to Péverya leaving for a concert three weeks ago, but even her impending arrival at the end of the month had made no dent in Kanafinwë's foul temper.

"Why would I not be?" Kanafinwë refused to look at him, fingers light on the gut strings of an instrument Findaráto was fairly sure he had not seen in four ages. A flight of notes like raindrops quivered in the air, and Findaráto winced. The whole room was humming with the echoes of whatever he had been chanting a moment before, and the shadows seemed strange in the dying afternoon light.

"You are singing."

That earned him a raised eyebrow, although Kanafinwë was still addressing his attention to the harp in his lap. "I am a musician, Findaráto. It is my business to sing." He seemed about to continue where he had left off, but Findaráto set a quick hand on the nearest upright of the harp and prayed Kanafinwë would not feel compelled to cut it off.

"I mean you are Singing. It is making your rafters vibrate. I rather think you will bring your study down around your ears in a verse or two."

"Tch. If a little light story-telling is enough to tear the roof off this room, I will have to hunt my architect down and demand my money back." Still, the light fall of plaster dust from the ceiling slowed and stopped, along with the persistent low hum that had settled in the back of Findaráto's ears an hour ago. The buzz of glass shaking in the windowpanes vanished, and the light from the broad windows behind Kanafinwë's perch returned to bending according to predictable laws.

“Also you are singing in a language I have not heard in seven thousand years, so you will forgive my concern.” The look on Kanafinwë’s face suggested that he was an inch away from collapsing his ceiling out of pure irritation, but at least he had not - yet - bitten his fingers off, and that had to be worth something. 

“I had not thought you would even know Taliska when you heard it, since Bëor seemed to drop his own language for Sindarin the moment he saw you,” Kanafinwë finally said, but some of the bitterness in his voice was gone, and the tightness in the air eased.

“I’ll have you know that he did no such thing, and that I have a fine grasp of Taliska. What were you singing?”

“You only think you know Taliska because Bëor spoke it with half the words borrowed from the first Moriquendi he met. Don’t give me that look, that boy was even more besotted with you than you were with him. Besides -”

“Makalaurë, I could hear you from a mile away, why in god’s name -” Tyelkormo froze at the top of the stairs, still dressed in his hunting leathers, bow over one shoulder and spear still in hand. His free hand tightened for a moment on the belt of his quiver, before he dipped a short bow in Findaráto’s direction, a fraction deeper than strictly necessary between close kin. “Cousin.”

Tyelkormo had apologized himself hoarse for hours after their first meeting until Findaráto had snapped at him to leave it alone, before he did something that Kanafinwë would have his head for. Tyelkormo had agreed immediately, and disappeared behind a wall of easy featureless courtesy that Findaráto had yet to see him emerge from. There was nothing at all behind the broad quiet smile he put on with his sandals in the morning, and Findaráto dearly wanted to hit him for it. 

“You hardly needed to drag yourself out of whatever hole in the woods you’ve been hiding in over one song,” Kanafinwë said sharply. 

“The wolves and the ravens for half a mile around are weeping, Makalaurë.” 

“The what -”

“Good. Someone should remember them.” Kanafinwë seemed about to address himself to his harp again, but Tyelkormo flickered forward and back again, swinging the harp by the crossbeam. He had to sway to the side a moment later as Kanafinwë’s penknife flashed past his shoulder to bury itself three inches deep in the shelf behind him. “ _Give it back_ , you gods-damned - that is a seven-thousand-year-old artifact,” he added savagely, as Tyelkormo tossed the harp back to him like a log of firewood.

“A _what_ ,” Findaráto wheezed, looking at the flat oblong of wood like it had sprouted leaves and begun to play itself. 

“It was a gift,” Kanafinwë said frigidly. “From one of the sons of Bór, the year before the Fifth Battle, and I have been to great pains to keep it in one piece throughout the intervening ages. If it were to break, Tyelkormo,” he added, and out of the corners of his eyes Findaráto thought he could see the shadows wavering again, “the responsible party would already be on their way to make their apologies to Borlach in person, do you understand me?”

Tyelkormo folded the penknife and set it on one of the shelves. Findaráto, glancing at him, saw nothing behind the pale flat silver of his eyes, and looked away again quickly. “For one, you have layered so much Song into that thing that it is quite beyond my ability to so much as scratch it. For another, as much as I might like to play the merry messenger between you and your lover, I rather doubt my efforts would be successful.” 

“Who was Borlach?” Findaráto asked in attempt to keep the peace, as Kanafinwë looked inclined to murder. “One of the Edain?”

“No, and vastly improved for not being so,” Tyelkormo muttered. Kanafinwë had him backed against the shelves with the point of an elbow set firmly in his sternum far more swiftly than he should have been able to move, though as Tyelkormo was several inches taller and far more solidly built it seemed that he was only allowing the attack from dubious good humor. Then again, Findaráto was not sure Kanafinwë’s scars had been quite so bright against the dark of his skin a moment before. Either way, he doubted his assistance would be welcome. 

“If you will keep your peace?” Kanafinwë hissed, and Tyelkormo raised his hands and bared his throat with a grin that might have been mocking, if it had been anything at all. He settled himself on an empty windowsill, and Kanafinwë lounged gracefully back to his own seat, and Findaráto, feeling conspicuous, sat on the edge of a table and wondered whether he should change the subject. “Bor and his sons fought in our party in the Fifth Battle. They were not of the Edain proper, but an analysis of their legends and particularly their distinctive style of lay-making strongly suggested that -“

“You are lecturing.” Findaráto and Kanafinwë both glared at him. 

“You have three distinct masteries in linguistics. A few long words will not hurt you, although the same cannot be said for my fists, so keep your thoughts to yourself. Besides, it was your opinion, as a linguist, that their language had merged with the Bëorian at roughly the point Bereg and his people returned east over the mountains. So, they were not Edain, though the long-standing presence of Sindarin loanwords in their language, the correspondences between their mythological figures and those of the Edain, and primarily the presence of a unique style of alliterative verse that had developed briefly among the people of Bëor all strongly suggested that they were in some part descended from one or more of the houses of the Edain.”

“But Borlach -?”

Kanafinwë’s fingers shivered across the strings before he said, a little too quickly and a little too sharply, “Borlach was one of the sons of Bór, of the Men who came from east-of-the-mountains, one of our allies in the Fifth Battle, and he and his people kept faith with us. He was a warrior-poet, one of the greatest of their people, and he died on the third day of the battle.”

Tyelkormo lifted his head; cocked it a little; added, lazy and light, “They were fucking while Bór and Maitimo were talking supply lines.”

One sour note dropped from the harpstring, and Tyelkormo sucked in a sharp breath, grimacing as something let out a wet crack. Kanafinwë had vanished with another flicker of sound, and Tyelkormo’s nose was bleeding. He tipped his head back with a wince, shooting a glance in Findaráto’s direction before looking away again just as quickly.

“That was cruel.” Findaráto felt fairly sure that if he said anything else, he would lose his temper entirely, and even with a broken nose he was fairly sure that Tyelkormo could best him in a proper fight.

“It was.” Even thousands of years later, the sound of a blood-choked cough still left Findaráto feeling vaguely ill. He had been lucky, in a way, to die before the wars had become truly unbearable. “I have an inimitable talent for that. He will be furious with me for weeks, I think.”

“Why did you _do_ it?”

That curious flat stare landed on him for only a moment before Tyelkormo readdressed himself to stemming the bleeding. “Why does my family do anything? Too much pride and not enough good sense, as usual. I would not recommend going after him, but they are your own eardrums to hazard,” he added, as Findaráto turned away in disgust, and an odd little twist in his voice made Findaráto pause and turn. Something had flickered across Tyelkormo’s face, almost too quickly to be sure it had ever been there -

“You were trying to make him leave,” he said slowly, “and he wanted to, but he was too stubborn to go without a reason. He did not want to talk about that Man, and he did not want to admit it -”

If he had wanted to see an emotion from Tyelkormo, he was looking at it. The sheer irritation on his face was such a perfect match to Kanafinwë’s that Findaráto almost had to laugh. “I will have hurt him for nothing if you keep digging up his secrets,” he snapped. “Yes, he does not talk about Borlach, and when he does, he does not admit that he ever cared. He likes to pass it off as universal, impersonal sorrow at what we all lost in the Nirnaeth, and now you will have to pretend that you do not know who he is singing about every time he digs up that old lament, like we all did when he was translating it into every new language he could lay his tongue to for weeks on end.” 

“Does Péverya -”

“Findaráto, they have been married longer than Artanis has been able to walk. I think she knows more about Borlach than I do, and I was the one fighting by his side.” Tyelkormo let out a short sound of disgust, cut short with a wince and one hand on the bridge of his nose. “Now I will have to go find Kanafinwë and apologize. Is there anything else you would like to know, while I am in the business of telling you things he would break my ribs for saying?”

The walls were down, and for a moment Findaráto thought they might be able to talk, really talk, about what had happened on the other side of the sea, if he only asked the right question - but what came out instead was, “Will he be all right?”

“Tch.” The look Tyelkormo shot him was fond in its withering scorn. “He is a poet. Give him a week and you will be wishing he would go back to moping in the woods.” He paused in the doorway, bloody, looking like half Findaráto’s nightmares come to life, but his smile, when it flickered out, was small and real and almost gentle. “He will apologize about the plaster dust when he remembers. Don’t forgive him too easily.” Then he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks I know it's been a hot minute, sorry about that. A few mod notes before we get into the history: I passed the Music 20 final with an A in the class - many thanks to everyone who sent good wishes on that! I realize I said I'd keep updating this and then vanished for five months but I genuinely don't have the intention of permanently abandoning this fic; there's still a lot of music history to get through. I've got another chapter in the works that should (hopefully) be up before the end of the week!
> 
> Okay, historical bullshit time! This chapter is brought to you by my final paper in English 14: Old English/History of the English Language, guest starring the last couple lectures in Linguistics 1: Intro Linguistics. It's about historical linguistics and the late-900s Anglo-Saxon elegy "The Wanderer," which is primarily about not talking about your feelings because expressing your grief is inappropriate in a noble warrior, losing everyone who ever mattered to you, and roaming the earth in sorrow at the natural bent of the world being towards death and decay. It's a very Maglor poem! However, I had to play even more fast and loose with canon than I usually do to give it to him, because The Wanderer is the source text for the famous "Where now the horse and the rider" ("Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago? Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa?" etc). I do have a bullshit headcanon for the various migrations that would have to occur for it to get from him to Rohan, and it doesn't strictly conflict with canon! But it is bullshit and it is long and unless you have a desperate desire to hear all my thoughts on the origins of modern Westron and how bad I want them to publish Tolkien's notes on Taliska we're going to handwave it in favor of character development and setup for the next chapter. 
> 
> Two final notes: First, whether Maglor and Borlach were actually in a relationship or whether Celegorm is just being a dick is up to your personal interpretations of LaCE. (I fully support queering it up wherever possible, but I also have very strong opinions on Weird And Exciting Breeds Of Intense Platonic Affection. Go wild.) Second, Maglor's performance is based on Benjamin Bagby's reconstructed Beowulf, which you can hear a bit of [here](https://bagbybeowulf.com/video/index.html). I highly recommend giving it a listen. It is a little weird and very wonderful and I love it dearly.


	7. le jeu de robin et marion

Péverya returned just as Findaráto received a letter from a pair of old friends inviting him to their daughter's wedding in Valmar, and so it was only on the night before he planned to set out that the four of them were together again - ranged around the library, watching as Kanafinwë sifted through a heap of loose scores; sometimes singing, when he found something he thought worth singing. They were introducing Péverya to songs from overseas, most of them about drinking, some of them about the dark, a very few about themselves, that they skipped, and even Tyelkormo had lounged along a windowsill to match Findaráto's tenor with his usual featureless geniality and a mostly-healed nose. 

"Kanafinwë, if this is what you were getting up to back then, I'm quite frankly astonished that they didn't strip you of your degree the moment you set foot back on the continent," Péverya said at the end of one particularly ribald verse, and Kanafinwë, laughing and out of breath, kissed her instead of replying. The bass part was loud and long and best performed with rather more vigor than one could usually muster sober, but Kanafinwë had given it his all regardless, and all of them, even Tyelkormo, were flushed and grinning at the end.

"You are behind the times there; they are giving out the degrees, now, for anyone who can muster up a thesis on the sociopolitical effects of our after-dinner entertainment on trade relations with our neighbors. Besides," overriding Péverya's groan, "besides, there is no such thing as bad music -"

"- say that one more time and I'm divorcing you -"

"- there is only music that does not suit your taste, please do not divorce me now, Péverya, you rather missed your chance for that. You should have done it last week at the very latest." Husband and wife locked eyes with such feeling that Findaráto looked quickly away, and found himself meeting Tyelkormo's dry gaze instead. He had to look away from that as well. "Here - oh, I've never heard this one before. It's a play," Kanafinwë added, with interest, as he flipped through a thin stack of partbooks. "It's a musical play! The style is ancient - it's fifth-century Nandorian; I don't know how I've missed it until now. Listen, it's quite pretty -" and he put on a horrible falsetto and began,

> "Canlaboth nin mela, Canlaboth nin sáf, Canlaboth nin mabenn pe nin sefitha,  
>  Canlaboth anim coll thand a raen, mír dithen annant; menin anhen!  
>  Canlaboth nin mela, Canlaboth nin sáf, Canlaboth nin mabenn pe nin sefitha."

"For those of us who never had to learn Sindarin," he added, as Péverya raised an inquiring eyebrow, "that is, 'Canlaboth loves me, Canlaboth has me, Canlaboth has asked me if he will have me, Canlaboth has given me a hidden cloak, a little jewel, and for that I go; Canlaboth loves me,' and so on. They were a popular folktale couple in Himlad - Canlaboth and Eilpheriathar, I mean. I had not heard this story, before - I wonder how it made it down to the Nandor? In any case, it's quite pretty - and not long, we can -"

"Excuse me," Tyelkormo said, suddenly, quietly, and turning to look at him Findaráto saw to his astonishment that he looked as though he were about to faint. Then he rolled off the windowsill into open air.

From three stories below, there was a soft rustle of leaves, and silence. Kanafinwë sighed, closing the partbook with an apologetic glance in Findaráto's direction. "He has been doing that more often even than he did as a child," he said, in a way that explained nothing at all. "I'll go after him." He set the partbook down and turned to go, only to be stopped by Péverya's hand resting lightly on his arm. 

"He won't thank you for it," she said, gently. "Let him be." And Kanafinwë, seeming to remember something with a wince, sat down again and gave her a weary smile. 

"He won't," he agreed. "I am sorry, Findaráto, that you only seem to be with us in moments of crisis. I am sure he will have come around in time to see you off in the morning." Privately, Findaráto had his doubts about that - he had seen the look of sheer panic in Tyelkormo's face before he had disappeared - but there was nothing to be gained by bringing it up, and, in any case, he told himself that it hardly mattered whether Tyelkormo wanted to see him on the road again at sunrise. 

They did not sing again that night, though Kanafinwë still leafed through the stacks, every now and then producing something that they all remembered from earlier days, sometimes with a story and a laugh, and it was not quite as uncomfortable as Findaráto had feared. After a few hours, Péverya left, citing a month's worth of letters to answer, and not much longer Kanafinwë followed, with a quiet good night. When the fire began to die down, Findaráto uncoiled himself from the long low chair by the hearth and made his way, slowly, through the cool dark hallways toward the guest room overlooking the garden. One of the windows in the stairwell of the solar tower was open, the cold night air drifting down the stairs, and on it he heard the wind in the leaves and a faint hint of birdsong. Then he looked out, and saw Tyelkormo perched on the very edge of the sloping kitchen roof, looking out into the night. There were nearly a dozen thrushes around him. 

It was not, objectively, a good idea. But Findaráto was equally aware that he had already made enough poor choices in his life to justify one more, and he hooked a leg out the window and did his best not to slide to his death. 

"I am not going to answer it to Makalaurë if you fall and break your neck," Tyelkormo said before he had made it more than a yard, "and you will -" Findaráto gritted his teeth and swayed and somehow kept his balance. There was a soft flutter of wings as the thrushes dislodged themselves, and in a moment Tyelkormo was at his side, glaring at him. "You will fall," he repeated, and then, "if you insist on coming out here, take your shoes off first. You are going to slide straight down the tile if you keep on like that." He looked as though he had been crying, but the set of his jaw did not invite comment.

A little awkwardly, Findaráto sat where he was, in the shadow of the small round tower beside them, and began unlacing his shoes. In the back of his mind, he was slightly concerned that having sat down he would not be able to get himself back up again, but thankfully Tyelkormo settled beside him after a moment, staring back out over the garden. The thrushes began to collect on his shoulders again, trilling softly, and he seemed almost to laugh before glancing back at Findaráto.

"Do you want them crawling on you?" he asked. "They want to, if you will let them," and at Findaráto's bewildered shrug three or four fluttered off his arms and nearly into Findaráto's hair, still singing.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Findaráto asked after a moment, when the birds had settled and it seemed there would be no easy escaping for some time. When he glanced at Tyelkormo, the incredulous scorn was back with a vengeance. 

"Not with _you_." Findaráto accepted that as no more than his due, and settled himself a little more comfortably on the edge of the roof. It was cold, the last nights of summer falling away into autumn, and he wondered how long Tyelkormo had already been there, alone in the dark.

When he looked again, perhaps a few minutes later, Tyelkormo was weeping.

The birds were trilling again, light looping sounds all around them, and after a few moments Tyelkormo lifted his head, tears silver on his cheeks in the moonlight, and trilled back, echoing the swooping chirps and the long high keening whistles and the rattle of clicking throats. Findaráto had to look away before he laughed - there was, in the end, very little that was dignified about the mechanics of birdsong, and he was fairly sure he would have nightmares about the way Tyelkormo's jaw shivered around the notes - but he seemed to be almost smiling through the tears. 

It went on for perhaps half an hour, while the thrushes flickered in and out of their shadows and Findaráto waited, but finally Tyelkormo dashed a rough hand across his eyes, starting half a dozen birds from their perches, and turned to look at him with a gaze too bright even for the moonlight and a grin a little more rueful than sharp. 

"Is there anyone _normal_ in your family," Findaráto heard himself ask, and it seemed to be the right thing to say because some of the terrible aching shine in Tyelkormo's eyes seemed finally to settle, "you talk to birds and your brother shatters glass with his voice, are any of you _normal_?"

"You are also a Singer," Tyelkormo said, and his voice was a little rough. Findaráto was not sure whether it was from the birdsong or the crying or both, and kept his opinions under his tongue.

"Not anymore. I've fallen out of practice." Under the circumstances, he thought he could be excused for allowing the gift to lapse. It was no incurable loss to the musical community in any case.

"Lack of practice is not the same as lack of ability." He looked away again, down at the thrush that had flown into his cupped hands. "They want me to talk to you."

Findaráto wondered, briefly, what the birds knew about it, and whether it was really a good idea to listen to an animal that spent its life grubbing for insects in the dirt. "What about?"

Tyelkormo lifted one finger, and the thrush settled on it with an inquisitive trill and a delicate cock of its head. "What do you think? They are nightingales." 

"No."

"Yes."

"But nightingales aren't native to -"

"I know."

"How did -"

"I don't know. These are the only ones on the continent and they have been harrassing me ever since I left Mandos. I think the only reason Oromë has not come to collect them is because the entire business would be so horribly awkward it might kill us both, and so I am stuck with them." He punctuated the last sentence with a light flick of his wrist, dislodging the nightingale. It settled on top of his head in a flutter of wings. "They want me to tell you about that song."

"They are only birds, and you do not have to," Findaráto felt obligated to say, still looking askance at the only nightingales in Valinor. He was not a very firm believer in ghosts, but he had to admit there was something unnerving about the idea. At the look on Tyelkormo's face, he trailed off. "I will listen, if you are going to talk."

"I am. You are free to push me off the roof whenever you please during the telling." From the trees behind them, Findaráto thought he could hear more birdsong, and forced himself to pay attention. "Makalaurë did not have overmuch time on his hands to follow every thread of musical development while he was minding the borders of the March, and so he can be excused for not being aware of this one. I took great pains never to bring it to his attention, regardless. So. What he did not know is that _I Narn Canlaboth a Eilpheriathar_ is not a Nandorian invention. It was written by a poet named Cauco, who was close kin to that Melarocco who composed the _Nyare Saucareo_. The entire family hated us, if you will remember, and expressed their dissatisfaction through satirical verse - _I Narn_ is the precursor and inspiration for the _Nyare_ , you see -"

Findaráto glanced at him, one eybrow raised. "You are lecturing." He did not get the laugh he had been aiming for, but Tyelkormo shot him a look that might have been amused in the right light. 

"I am. It is easier when I can pretend I am only presenting my findings on the tongues of beasts to the Lambengolmor. Do you understand the thing now?" For a moment, Findaráto wanted to, if only to take the horrible anxious look out of Tyelkormo's eyes, and have the whole miserable business of talking about it over and done with. It would have been a horrible lie.

"Forgive me, but I do not, and I am not sure I _want_ to know how 'Canlaboth loves me, Canlaboth has me, Canlaboth has asked if he can marry me' could apply to your father." 

Tyelkormo blinked, and then his eyes widened a little. "Oh. No, it is not about my father. It is about me."

"I beg your pardon?"

Tyelkormo was not looking at him, and speaking very rapidly as he said, "The whole play is about the shepherdess Eilpheriathar and her lover Canlaboth and the buffoon of a knight who falls in love with her and tries to carry her off. Makalaurë thinks it is a Nandorian offshoot of the legends about Eilpheriathar and Canlaboth of Himlad, but he has gotten the order wrong, and the origins. You see, their family, the whole house of Áyan, followed under Artaresto's banner and -" his breath hitched for one moment - "hated Atarinkë and me. With good reason. Because of what we did in Nargothrond. So, Eilpheriathar is Lúthien, Canlaboth is Beren, and it was written specifically to send me into a blind rage every time I heard it sung in half the taverns between the Gelion and the sea."

 _Hardly a difficult proposition_ , Findaráto was about to say, but he frowned as something occurred to him and changed his answer. Besides - it was not that he particularly enjoyed poking at open wounds, even in this particular situation. "If it was written because of what happened in Nargothrond," he asked, and gently ignored how Tyelkormo seemed to twitch at it, "why is it about Beren and Lúthien, and not me? It seems a strange sort of memorial."

Tyelkormo was silent for a moment, letting the soft chatter of the nightingales in the trees behind him fill the space. Finally, without looking at Findaráto, he said, "It is not a memorial, as such. It is designed to make me, specifically, miserable. You recall how you threatened me with hazard of life and limb to stop apologizing to you?" It would have been hard to forget. Findaráto nodded. "I never even tried to ask Lúthien for forgiveness. When she lived, or after she died, or even from these idiot birds. It is because - and you cannot get an explanation without my apologizing again, please do not murder me - it is because what I did in Nargothrond was cruel, and unjust, and I knew it even if I did not particularly care, but I was not a shaking wreck for weeks afterwards. About her, I was."

"I do not think I understand the distinction." A part of him wanted to be mildly offended that Tyelkormo obviously thought kidnapping a stranger to be a more serious offense than sending one's cousin to his death, but he had never pretended to understand whatever his cousins passed off as logic. 

"Because it was what that bastard had done to _her_." And Findaráto understood then, because where Tyelkormo was concerned, there were several bastards of varying descriptions and degrees of severity, but only one who could be introduced to a conversation without further identification. "They were so alike, you know -" Findaráto raised an eyebrow, because he had met Lúthien Tinúviel once, at a diplomatic meeting with her father, and there was nothing of the pale, willowy, reserved princess of Doriath in stocky, dark, loud-mouthed Irissë - "the way she smiled like a knife when I said I would help her, that was Issë all over. It was like I had become _him_ , and after I'd locked the door to her room I was sick in the bushes for half an hour." 

Findaráto could think of nothing to say in response, and so they sat there on the edge of the roof, watching the clouds pass in the moonlight and listening to the soft sounds of the night around them. One of the nightingales seemed to be asleep on Tyelkormo's shoulder; over the edge of his cowl he could see the tips of more feathers in the warm hollow at the base of his throat, and it made rather more sense, suddenly, why of all people they swarmed around him.

"There was a plan," Tyelkormo finally said, with the sort of controlled plainness that said if he allowed the slightest fraction of emotion to color his words it would be the end of him, "to force an alliance with Thingol, to be utterly sure of defeating the Great Foe, and it would have worked - I know it would have worked, no matter the pain we caused along the way - but she told me how her father had trapped her at the top of a beech tree for weeks. She looked right at me, when she said it, although Atarinkë had been asking the questions until then, and I knew that she knew about Eöl and Issë, that she believed I would help her for Issë's sake. And still I did not give her the chance to help us where her father would not have. I was afraid of being the weak link in the plan. Look where that got me."

"Let me guess - you forced yourself to do something you did not want to do, and that nobody else wanted you to do, for no end result other than making Thingol utterly furious with you, and losing your dog." The Tyelkormo of Nargothrond would have thrown him off the roof for that, but Findaráto felt himself inclined to make bad decisions again, and he would have to trust to luck that it would not bite so deeply at that moment, with the moonlight still around them. 

As he'd hoped, he got a laugh for his trouble - small, so as not to wake the birds, but not the kind that preceded murder or serious bodily injury. "Truly, I am a font of wise decisions." There was a soft, sleepy warble from his cowl, and he raised one unimpressed eyebrow. "So. Have these little mongrels dragged enough of an explanation out of me, or must you stay any longer on a cold rooftop, when you are for the road at dawn?"

"It is not a very long way to Valmar, and I will have time to rest when I arrive." Then, because it needed to be said, "I will still maim you if you try to apologize again, but I am willing to let my grudge for Nargothrond lie. There is no point letting that fester any longer, so, if you are of the same mind, let us not keep tiptoeing around each other like this."

Tyelkormo did not speak at all for a long moment, and when he did, it was only to say, "If you are going to Valmar - it is nearing the time for the autumn rites, and so if you should happen to see Oromë, please do not mention the birds. It is not a conversation I should like to have."

"Tyelkormo, is this really -"

"- if you tell him, he will have to come and collect them, since they should not be in these lands at all," he added rapidly, not looking at Findaráto, and the nightingales were beginning to rouse themselves again, light claws on Findaráto's shoulders and arms, eyes bright in the moonlight.

"If you insist," Findaráto finally said. "I do not think it is a thing you will be able to avoid forever, though," and he was not quite sure whether he meant Oromë or himself. 

"Thank you." They sat there quietly, not looking at each other, watching the garden and the golden leaves swaying and dropping in the breeze, until finally Tyelkormo shifted a little and began nudging the birds nesting on him into the air. "You should go inside," he said, as he reached over and gently dislodged two from Findaráto's shoulders, "if we are to be rid of you in the morning," and if it was not quite the response Findaráto had hoped for, it was at least better than the steadfast blankness it felt as though he had been ramming his head against for weeks. He smiled, shifted to rise, and paused. 

"I am not sure I can."

"Is that 'I am too in love with the beauty of the night skies to move an inch,' or is that 'my legs have gone numb and I will fall to my death if I stir a step' -"

"The latter, thank you, Tyelkormo."

"I see."

"I can hear you laughing, you bastard."

"I am sure it was a nightingale. Give me your arm, here. Certainly a nightingale," he added, as Findaráto followed him back through the window and shut it again and wondered helplessly whether Tyelkormo might not have been, on balance, less of a nuisance as an enemy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been tossing around how I wanted to handle this chapter for literal months, which is why it is long as fuck, why it is a got damn mess of every thought I’ve ever had about Celegorm for a quarter of a year, and why it has the longest history/etymology note so far. Enjoy!
> 
> Music history: Cauco is the French trouvère Adam de la Halle (1240-1287), and _I Narn Canlaboth a Eilpheriathar_ is his most famous work, the secular musical play _Le Jeu de Robin et Marion._ It's the first known work in this genre that has survived to the present and it's pretty cool! The musical sections are in a very simple, popular style for the time, and, uh, a lot of the jokes in the prose parts are tonally similar. (Despite the names, it's probably unrelated to the English Robin Hood/Maid Marian, or, if it is, _Le Jeu_ came first.) Like a lot of talented musicians from the period, Adam de la Halle hailed from the town of Arras; it's strongly suspected that Phillipe de Vitry (1291-1361, composer of much of the _Roman de Fauvel_ (see ch.3)) was as well. I settled for putting them in the same family. The verse that Maglor sings is a Sindarin adaptation of the first song in _Le Jeu_ , modified to be more relevant to the _Lay of Leithian_ ; you can listen to it [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4ZFYj57dUU), and [here](http://stcpress.org/pieces/robins_maime) are the lyrics. 
> 
> Names: Adam de la Halle was also known as "Adam the Hunchback"; Quenya has an existing word for that so I ran with it. Arras used to be called Nemetocenna, after a Celtic word for "holy place," and wow, shocker, Quenya has a word for that too. (I skimped on the Quenya because the Sindarin turned my hair white. I know the Silm says the Noldor had an easier time learning Sindarin than the Sindar did Quenya but I can't believe that's true. I mean, just from a phonetics standpoint - Sindarin has so many sounds and sound combinations that don't exist and aren't allowed in Quenya; presumably that would be as difficult for the Noldor to learn as click consonants or the Welsh "ll" would be for me?? Whatever.) (Sindarin is a trainwreck and I can guarantee I've made at least twelve mistakes here without knowing it.) Anyway! Because "Marion" is a name with hella religious connotations, and I wanted to retain some element of Lúthien's actual name, I took the bird element of Tinúviel and some of the vague sounds of "Elbereth" and came up with "Eilpheriathar," which, being technically a full sentence ("Eilph eriathar," "swans will rise") is probably terrible Sindarin name construction. Who gives a fuck. Not me. "Beren" means "bold," "Robin" is an animal; hence "Canlaboth," which has some of the sounds of "Camlost" and means "bold rabbit." I'm never touching Sindarin again.
> 
> Misc: Y'all don't want to know how many hours I spent looping ["Singing nightingale. The best bird song."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdlIbNrki5o) on YouTube but if you want to watch it you can also be horrified by what Celegorm is doing with his mouth. Nightingales are only native to Europe; it follows that if Middle-earth is fantasy Europe then presumably Valinor is fantasy-America and therefore devoid of nightingales. We do have several kinds of thrush, though.


End file.
